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One nice thing about CL: They get out of the way.

I haven't sold anything on eBay in probably two years because they are (or can be and have been) down-right horrible to sellers. Imagine having your entire Paypal account embargoed for a month because some guy complained about shipping costs. And this after having fifteen opportunities to NOT bid, each of which --and the listing-- clearly disclosed shipping costs.

On CL you get back to a truer buyer-seller relationship. If you don't have social problems (meaning you actually like engaging with people in person) CL is fantastic. I like shaking someone's hand after closing a win-win deal.

Yes, the CL site sucks. Obviously utility trumps design by a longshot. I love nice design but I always remind myself of CL when stressing over "pixel perfect design" (a tendency I have). people don't use a service because they are in awe of the design, they use it because of what they get out of it.



I hate selling things on craigslist. When I tried to sell a comforter, I had to correspond via email with 9 different people before someone would actually come and pick up the damn thing. They kept dropping out silently. When I would ping them, they'd say, "Oh, I bought a different one." or "I decided to buy it from <blah website>."

The problem is there is no reputation on craigslist, so people can be as bad as they want.

I can't compare that to ebay, tho. Maybe ebay is worse for a seller.




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